Collaboration Technology 2.0

Goals, shmoals - that's simply not enough!

OK, so you've got a goal, a strategy and a team, but can it be effective? The number of people in a team truly influences your ability to deliver a positive outcome. So where does it start and where does it stop?

At a recent CW 500 Club session my old friend Prof. Clive Holtham from the Cass Business School was speaking about Second Life, looking at its possible application in mainstream business - currently not a lot - though you'd be advised to monitor the progress of Second Life as it could be the application that comes out of left field to surprise us. Chatting afterwards we discussed European management attitudes to collaboration. We agreed how difficult it has been to embed effective team working in the UK, particularly in public sector companies. This is partly due to the prevalence of a two tier approach that I call Mount Olympus Management.

This is where the Gods (top management) expect the rest of us living below the virtual cloud line to obey rules they choose to ignore.

When you pull your Christmas cracker and put on the funny hat remember that while the joke inside may not be funny at least it passed the scrutiny of the thought police.

How did you do with your emails this year?

It's easy to slip into careless habits so here are a few tips to remind you what NOT to do for 2008...

You think you are working, but are you really? That is the question implied in a new Basex study (reported by ars technica). Their report, "Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us," estimates that email, IM interruptions and reading blogs by knowledge workers will drain the US economy of $588B this year. It claims that e-distractions are eating up 28% of a knowledge worker's day. Consider there are about a fifth the number of knowledge workers here as in the US. Factor in our higher average fully loaded salaries. Quite easily you are pushing £100B as the parallel cost to our own economy.

I was talking to a Don who is an assessor at a university court. A court that has had civil jurisdiction in all matters involving scholars or privileged persons of the university since 1244. We were discussing email and its dangers and how, as a consequence, telephones are ringing again between the the ivory towers.

Mr Darling if you want a modern Britain then you have to enable change. Today's budget did nothing to stimulate or facilitate the adoption and renewal of IT infrastructure in this country.

I have a vested interest. In my distant past I worked for the BBC, I still have a great deal of affection for the esteemed organ of the British establishment, but it is changing. I came across this very interesting article on the changes now being implemented at the Beeb.

The corporation has really grasped the possibilities afforded by the latest web technologies (check out its podcast and vodcast output) and within the next two years on the back of the iPlayer we are going to see a tons of innovations affecting both UK, European and world wide audiences. The world of broadcasting, narrowcasting and affintiycasting will never be the same again.

What is it all about Bob? IBM Software Group and Lotus brand in particular needs to demonstrate some sense of real prduct strategy. It does exist in part but the 'whole' seems to be absent. IBM, I suspect your customers and prospects want to see this from you as well as great product, not just 'us' partners.

Mike Rhodin, GM of Lotus, is moving on. Its not news now, it was announced last week. As an IBM'er he has served his tour of duty and is taking on a senior role here in Europe. Bob Picciano (Sales Lead for DB2) is taking over. It is a great time to join the brand but there are a some important issues that need addressing. In January I was at Lotusphere and l have attended two Lotusphere Come to You events recently and with the amount of time between the these events the issues surrounding the big picture seems to have fallen into sharp focus.

Do blogs matter, well maybe in the IBM universe they do... Ed Brill is one of IBMs most influential bloggers (as an IBM employee) and his reactions to my last post have stirred a fair amount of comment. Interestingly he directly quoted me (below) in his blog:

It is clear from even the most casual observation to see that the funds now being invested in product development are at a rate not seen for a decade. As much as I applaud this turnaround it seems that although the factory is running at 100% capacity the marketing strategy as to which customers should be buying the output and more importantly why they should be buying which piece of the output seems to have gone walkabout. Looking on at a distance, how all the pieces fit together within an 'over arching' structure frankly seems completely absent.

I have been impressed at the level of rational discussion engendered as a result of the excerpt quoted in his blog, however I am disappointed at the shortage of constructive suggestions generated. As a blogger its always nice when people agree with you and often as nice when they don't!

So the challenge is to those who care - come up with some pithy positioning (try to say that drunk) so that the senior IBM dudes who I know are reading this and other blogs can be inspired to do better than they are at the moment.

Ideas as responses to this post please

ps the emphasis is still on the why

I don't want to alarm my Quickr, Sharepoint, Notes or Exchange readers but to more than paraphrase the Barak Obama mantra (sort of): SaaS is going to deliver 'Change we can believe in' .

Whether built around the Microsoft 'Mesh' vision, Google Enterprise Apps or IBMs SaaSpace, the technologies we all have traditionally had our arms around (both physically in the form of servers, and metaphysically in the form of platforms) is about to exit through the Corporate front door.

In the old days waiting for the sun to shine when on holiday normally meant reading some trashy paperback, those days are past. This morning I have been listening to a well researched BBC World Service program on Social Networking impacts on business. The nugget I picked up from this program was the importance of anti company / organisation Facebook Groups or Websites, A contributor noted how useful these sites are to gain insight on what a company is doing badly and then build strategies to address shortcomings.

Why do so many good business ideas bite the dust. For many it is because they are not really as good as they seem, for others maybe the economics don't work or they are simply to complex to execute. Lastly we have the 'ideas ahead of their time', the most frustrating sort is when a good idea bites the dust only to be resurrected some time later and then become wildly successful.

Watching last nights 'Apprentice' on BBC really brought the matter into sharp relief, two teams set the same tasks found their ideas built around it, support it and were convinced they could sell it until the cold bucket of reality was tipped over their collective heads. Ego had been nurtured but not tested against common sense. Looking back over ventures that I have directly and indirectly been involved with I can see how many time the 'good idea' became an end in itself with large groups of people either promoting or not opposing it because of the energy and support of the sponsor.

It does question the 'wisdom of crowds' which statistically may be true but as will all statistics there are sufficient variables to be dangerous!

Next time you have a good idea - try to test it both by restraining your own ego but by giving sufficient weight to the egos of others. The Alan Sugars of this world love great ideas but they also love the consideration of common sense to ensure that they can make money out of them.

What makes teamwork, for that matter what makes a team work? I can't help but wonder. Over the years I have worked in many sorts of teams. Teams that are single purposed, clearly led with very differentiated tasks for each member. At the other extreme I have worked with teams where objectives are poorly defined, roles even more so and individuals left to determine amongst themselves what they need to do, when, how and why!.

Which teams structures were the most successful? Well neither, both had pluses along with other mixtures of team styles - simply put: you can't generalise.

Even with clear leadership and sharply focussed goals teams fail - this can be often caused by soft issues - personality clashes, internal politics and such like. Teams even with the most wooly of construction often deliver fantastic results. Individual commitment, professionalism and people engagement supplanting the rigid structures found elsewhere.

These are my top tips for effective technology supported teams:

o Clear team objectives - preferably written down and clear goal lines that can be crossed

o Effective communications - mandatory shared content, any emails that circumvent this should be stamped upon in a hard and ruthless manner

o Regular meetings - virtual or physical, set in stone and properly documented

o High visibility of slipping actions - stuff that at the outset was trivial can come back to haunt the team if not tracked

o Listen - Team members must be encouraged to contribute in and outside of their comfort zones, with luck this will drive out the 'gotchas'

All of this comes on the back of an 'upgrade' to ease the problems associated with the current version of the blogging platform used across the Reed Business Information titles here in the UK (and elsewhere for all I know). For months all of us have been dealing with instability, poor performance and a general lack of facility mainly due the old system was about 3 full releases behind the latest supported release. The first tentative upgrade was scheduled for the 14th April and the upgrade has been on and off since then.

You can guess what has happened, Computer Weekly (and the rest of the titles) has experienced the sort of 'gremlins' that we in the real world of organisational computing face on almost daily basis. It was not for a lack of planning, there appears to have been a lot of that. It was not for the lack of testing, that too was extensively undertaken. As my fellow blogger Michael Pincher loves to say 'it was due to the law of unintended consequences'.

It is working now otherwise you would not be able to read this. I know it has been very embarrassing for them although the problems do not represent the end of the universe. It is however it is a salutatory lesson for the professional journalists who must have got very frustrated over the last few hours because of the service failure. They now know first hand the knife edge that afflict so many systems in the 'real world'. In future they might take a few more thought cycles before taking a 'pop' at some new IT disaster.

• Full featured software appliance 
• Self-managing, self-healing system 
• Email and advanced webmail 
• Office productivity tools 
• Network level firewall, antispam & antivirus protection 
• Remote connectivity and VPN 
• File and print services 
• Central file management 
• Automated disk backup 
• Disaster recovery

An IT guy has been busted for insider trading after gaining info while snooping on an exec's email; see Financial Times web site. Insider trading is illegal but how confidential are emails.

Many organisations state in their policies that emails are not confidential. However, most people make the mistake of believing they are. Simple rule - if it's important encrypt it.

It's time to revisit your Risk Register and reassess your organisation's Strategic Risk and how you should counter it.

The ecomomic weather is changing fast - it's mitigation time - get ready to apply powerful countermeasures.

As Neil Young crooned in Comes a Time, "In the field of opportunity it's ploughing time again."

The behaviours listed below are based on careful observation of the behaviours commonly practised by those people who are successful when working with others. When used consistently they will transform your ability to work with and through people. They are: 

• Clarify what you are committed to
• Listen Empathically
• Speak Authentically
• Think Win/Win

Interesting debate at the Computer Weekly 500 Club last night about the expectations of people entering the workforce. The speaker, JP Rangaswami, M.D. BT Design, outlined the difference between the Home and the Enterprise computing experience i.e. that of freedom versus control.

With mine and other colleagues' children making their way in the world, the attitude they have to using/abusing web technologies while at work means HR has its work cut out. How do you manage people who spend working time collaborating with their pals on what they'll be doing after hours?

I used to enforce a holiday period for consultants who would happily work on through the summer if they could.

If you can't affford to go away, take your holiday entitlement and learn new skills . The adage 'a change is as good as a rest' is as valid as ever. People have an energy crunch too.

Excellent article in Computer Weekly about building your brand over the summer.

If only I could follow its sage advice :-)

As IT strategists our job is to lay the foundations for integrated common communication services, through infrastructure upgrades or managed services. To support this we need multi-channel IP networks and unified communications structures to deliver our interaction and collaboration needs. P.S The dog's fast asleep.